Drones for Railways: avoid track possession

Value drivers for Railways: avoid track possession.
Count in days and not in weeks.

In Europe,
Digital Railways has been a major focus of attention, with an objective to
improve passenger experience but also competitivity vs other means of
transport. In this context, a number of railway companies have started their
“digitization from the air” and use drones as a tool to improve their
efficiency and operations.

Avoid track possession

Traffic
interruption impacting passenger service schedule is a major issue for rail
operators. As a result, inspection of tracks and maintenance works take place
during a string of relatively short timeslots spread over several weeks, when
track possession does not impact customer service. In the extreme case of a
busy underground metro network, those slots consist of approximately 3 hours at
night.

Digitize from the air. Collect accurate,
engineer-grade data on the network.

In an
infrastructure business, knowing your asset, understanding the capex and opex
required, is key. However, such information may not be available, nor complete.
Infrastructure networks have been built over decades, by different teams in
different regions using different tools. Today, using drones, images can be
collected and processed in order to create a precise 3D digital modelling
replica of the network, with the engineer-grade accuracy required for most
business requirements.

Avoid exposing teams to works along the tracks.

Health and
Safety can be a challenge when working along the tracks, or near hazardous
equipment such as electrical substations. Remote-sensing de facto limits
exposure to Health & Safety incidents.

De-risk schedule.

A side-effect
of track possession and works spread over multiple short timeslots is the
uncertainty over the works’ schedule, due to the unpredictability of events
along tracks in service. When using drones, once the data is collected, the
data analysis work is performed “off-track” and the uncertainties surrounding
track possession no longer apply.

Existing main use cases

Ongoing use
cases are focused on optimizing operations and maintenance: